Green School Grants - Quebec

Save Our Marsh (Sauvons notre marais)

Fabienne Leblond, a teacher at École Des Jolis Prés in Laterrière, QC, is leading students in an effort to save a small marsh behind the school. Unfortunately, students say, “people who live near the marsh do not understand the role of wetlands, and do things to threaten their ecological integrity.” Students have observed waste accumulating in the marsh, and damage done by the use of off-road vehicles in the marshland. In response, they plan “to carry out a campaign to raise awareness among students, and thereby the whole community, on the importance of saving this marsh.”

The team at Des Jolis-Prés will organize a clean-up with the help of volunteer relatives and friends, as well as community experts. The process of saving the marsh will provide opportunities for numerous educational activities, such as an introduction to ornithology and botany, making birdhouses and herbaria, observing wildlife, and discovering macro-invertebrates and zooplankton. Students will create posters informing visitors about the marsh and its inhabitants, which will be housed in a pergola near the marsh; these interpretive tools will be updated year after year by new students working to protect the marsh.

Organically Grown and Student Sown

The courtyard at John Rennie High School in Pointe-Claire, Quebec will house an organic farm once the school’s Green Team gets their newest project under way. Students across grades and curricula will collaborate on a fruit and vegetable garden sown with native plant species. Geography students will benefit from having hands-on experience with agricultural techniques and principles, and will be able to conduct research on how well plants grow in different soil and sun conditions. Students in cooking classes will assist with the planting of the garden, and will eventually harvest the vegetables to add to the meals they make in class. Since the school already has a composting program in place, organic waste created in cooking class will eventually go back into the soil of the garden.

Science teacher April Rehel expects the project to give students greater access to locally grown, organic food sources, and to “create an active learning environment that provides new ways to learn about the natural environment, nutrition, math, agriculture, horticulture, and the practicality, cost, and health benefits of growing your own food.” While building teamwork skills, students participating in this project will reap the health benefits of getting more fresh air and physical activity during school hours.

From One Apple to Another

"From One Apple to Another" is the name that École Boutons d'or, in Bécancour, Quebec, has given to its grant project. The project originated in a simple desire to create more shade in the schoolyard, but has become much more.

"'From One Apple to Another' refers to the life cycle of the apple," explains teacher Nancy Santerre. "The apple peel that we recycle decomposes and enriches the soil of the apple trees that provide us with more good apples." With the grant funds, the school will buy three apple trees to plant in the schoolyard. "We'll need compost and water to feed those trees," says Santerre, and the school plans to make the production of compost and collection of water part of the project, too.

"Our school is equipped with gutters that lead rainwater along the foundation," says Santerre. The project will divert that water into rain barrels bought with grant funds. "The students will see that recovering rainwater is a good, ecological way to water our apple trees."

Once the trees produce apples, they'll be used for cooking. The cooking waste will be go into a composter, also paid for with grant money, and will be supplemented with waste from snacks. "Each class will be responsible for carrying waste to the composter, so the students will be educated in the process of decomposition." The entire project, says Santerre, "will show students the importance of everyday activities in ecological action."

School Compost

Every year for the past several years, Anne Paradis, who teaches at École des Hauts-Clochers in Quebec City, has introduced two classes to the practice of composting. "They've been ambassadors," says Paradis. "Composting is starting to become a reality for the children who will become the adults of tomorrow's planet." Now, the school has decided to introduce all 600 of its elementary-aged students to composting.

The school has already bought some outdoor composters and, with grant funds, will buy more. Students will be collecting compostable materials indoors, from lunch and snack waste, and outdoors. "This spring, we'll be doing a thorough cleaning of the schoolyard," says Paradis. "That way, we kill two birds with one stone: we use the dead leaves collected to feed our compost, and we beautify our environment."

Although the project's primary goal is to reduce the waste the school produces, beautifying the school environment is another important aim. "Next school year, we want to use the compost we've made to help us proceed with planting trees in the schoolyard," says Paradis. The grant money will pay for the trees and also for interior planters. "We want to treat our compost and use it inside the school, in flower boxes."

Paradis believes that both the flower boxes and the trees, which will be planted in a high-traffic part of the schoolyard, will be an important motivator for the students to compost. "The results will be visible to all, every day."

Walking School Bus

"Transportation contributes 80 per cent of atmospheric pollution," says Manon St-Hilaire, a teacher at Ste-Thérèse-de-l'Enfant-Jésus elementary school in St-Jérôme, Quebec. However, St-Hilaire admits, transportation pollution is a multi-factored problem. That's why the school's grant project tackles "eco mobility" from several perspectives.

"Our school is situated in an urban area," says St-Hilaire, "and is made up of 324 students who are bussed in and 161 students who arrive on their own." The school's grant project is targeted especially at that latter group, a large majority of whom is driven to school by their parents."We'd like to promote alternative means of transportation," says St-Hilaire.

The school has identified three specific alternatives. "Many of our students would like to get to school by bicycle," says St-Hilaire, "but aren't able to because we don't have a place to park bikes." With the grant funds, the school will buy three bike racks with 12 places each, plus chain-link fencing to surround the bike parking lot.

The second alternative is a "walking bus." "A walking bus involves a parent or older student waiting at walking-bus stops for the children enrolled in the program and accompanying them to school along a defined route," explains St-Hilaire. The third alternative is a car pool. The grant will pay for bibs to identify the walking bus "drivers" and for brochures to promote both the walking bus and the car pool.

"Our three-part project allows students to be healthy, while helping them to take responsibility for transportation and environmental issues," says St-Hilaire. "It also promotes conviviality!"

"The range for this project is vast  2,500 square kilometres," says environmental educator Alan Earwaker. Using Maniwaki Woodland School northwest of Montreal as a base, Earwaker is leading a team of 50 teachers and 850 students at eight community schools throughout the Outaouais region of Quebec. "The project mission is to empower the students and teachers to become responsible citizens who conserve and protect the natural environment," says Earwaker.

Using the grant money, Earwaker will equip a mobile classroom with field, pond, and insect guides, along with binoculars, snowshoes, and orienteering kits, as well as various ecology games. This inventory supports workshops that will build the environmental capacity of the teachers involved in the project, Earwaker says, allowing them to integrate classroom curriculum with environmental awareness lessons.

The idea behind the capacity building is to establish what Earwaker calls a "learning continuum." That's a need identified by the Institute for Earth Education. "The institute states that students who do not have routine exposure to environmental experiences up to the age of 12 years do not care about nature or the environment.' This project addresses that by establishing a learning continuum with routine exposure from kindergarten to secondary five," says Earwaker. "Continual exposure will instill in our students an appreciation of the outdoors, a wonder of nature, and the development of environmental knowledge and skills."

Earwaker believes the program will also help motivate students to stay in school and to live in, learn about, and protect their local communities and environments. "And that," he say, "is something that is especially important to rural Quebec communities."

Five years ago, a group of students in the rural Quebec town of Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts discovered that one of the town's sewer pipes bypassed the wastewater treatment plant and drained directly into the river. That discovery sparked what has become an annual expedition to test the rivers water quality.

"Each year, 15 different students embark on a two-day canoe trip down the North River from its source to Lake Raymond," says Jean-Franois Giasson, who teaches science at the town's secondary school, Polyvalente-des-Monts. "With adult volunteers, they collect about 40 water samples to test several parameters, such as temperature, phosphorous and nitrate/nitrate content, and fecal coliform count. The students also collect plankton in the lakes they traverse." On their return, the students analyze some of the samples themselves, and send others out for specialized lab testing. "Once they have the results, the students write a status report that is sent to elected officials of municipalities the river runs through," says Giasson. "In summer, tourists come to the river for canoeing and kayaking, fishing, and swimming. Our studies show that the river is sometimes too polluted for these activities."

This school year, the students' expedition will be supported by the grant, which will fund everything from canoe rental and camping supplies, to collection equipment and lab testing. Giasson says the students are hoping to start finding evidence that their efforts over the past five years are having results  this year, Sainte-Agathe began a $20-million program to upgrade its wastewater treatment. Says Giasson, "The effects of this environmental study in the community are very large."

Follow the St. Lawrence River north from Montreal, and you come to a region known for its natural beauty, the Chaudire-Appalaches. It's named after the Chaudire River that meanders through it and the Appalachian Mountains that border its southern reaches, but it's also famous for its forests of maple and oak. It's those forests that have inspired St. Damien Secondary School, in one of the region's villages, to launch the project "Do a Lot with a Little."

"Our students will collect maple seeds and oak acorns that we find in the forests," says Valrie Bgin, a social worker at the school, "then transplant them into potting soil in our organic greenhouse." The grant funds will buy the soil and nursery boxes. Although the region is forested, the school grounds aren't landscaped, and the goal of the project is to beautify them, particularly the recreation area. "Because it's where the school bus is parked it's little used, and at present has a neglected air." Bgin hopes the trees will inspire the students to spend time outdoors.

The project plan is to provide each of the school's 325 students and 60 staff with a sapling to plant in the grounds around the school and soccer field. "We'll be contributing to improving our environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," says Bgin. "Environmental studies confirm that to have a less polluted environment, it's necessary to have trees, and forests."

The project aims to nurture not only the trees but the students, too. "We believe that a greener environment, one where there is respect for nature, can improve the students' daily lives," says Bgin, "and even help keep them in school."

"Enormous quantities of paper are used in an elementary school," says Perptue Polifort, principal of La Fraternit elementary school in Montreal. "Even though we have been recycling paper for many years, our Student Committee wanted to go further and do more with all that paper."

Polifort and the school's teachers decided to help the students towards the goal by coming up with an innovative initiative that supports both the environment and learning: a school pulp mill. The students transform the schools waste paper into handcrafted paper ttthat they use in class projects.

Polifort says the pulp mill not only preserves the forest and its capacity to regenerate, but also reduces consumption of goods. Plus, "because it's a concrete situation, the pulp mill facilitates the integration of knowledge," she says, making the lessons it teaches in protecting the environment lasting ones.

The only issue with the pulp mill has been its limited equipment, which has restrained the number of students who can use it. With the grant funds, the school will be able to buy a full complement of paper-making equipment, including a shredder, pulp mixers, sieves, felts, sponges and dryers. Polifort says the school will also now be able to train all the teachers how to use the paper-making equipment so that they, in turn, can train the students.

"Our pulp mill has an important role to play in fighting climate change," says Polifort. "Now everyone at the school will be an integral part of the project."

Mischa Schuler believes gardens can nurture many experiences beyond what she calls hands-on "dirt time."

Schuler is a laboratory technician at Richmond Regional High School in Richmond, QC. Along with the school's six science teachers, Schuler is dedicated to and engaged in transforming the schoolyard's current grass monoculture into a garden oasis. There will be elderberry and blueberry bushes, apple, plum, pear, apricot and cherry trees, and grapevines -- all bought with grant funds. More than a hundred students will be involved in planting, caring for and harvesting them.

However, those classic gardening activities are just the beginning, Schuler explains, of what the project will spark. "Our woodshop class will incorporate the design and building of shade structures and benches into their curriculum. Art students will have a vibrant new model for outdoor watercolour painting." Each fall, the art students will create a "living sculpture" as a centrepiece for the garden. Students in culinary classes will pick fruits and vegetables to pickle and preserve. The garden will provide dye plants for a Native arts cycle, seeds for a seed exchange with another school, and medicinal herbs for the natural remedies the Science Club will learn to make. "Our garden will be a space of biodiversity, colour, scent and creativity," says Schuler.

And that will make it place where it's not always necessary to be engaged in curricular activities. "An equally important aspect is experiencing the simple pleasure of enjoying lunch in the garden with friends, and developing lasting memories."

"The average amount of waste produced per child in a Canadian school is 67 pounds per school year," says Bhanu Kotecha, a science teacher at Lake of Two Mountains High School, which is known as LTMHS. "The aftermath of a lunch hour at LTMHS," Bhanu adds, "is proof of this."

Kotecha is one of three staff members and 20 students who have founded the Environmentally Conscious Outreach, or ECO, Project. Because the rural community where the school is located, Deux Montagnes, Que., is unable to provide LTMHS with a waste disposal service, the ECO Project team is taking matters into the own hands.

They'll not only be constructing a composter with materials funded by the grant, but also be developing a campaign to motivate students to get involved. There will be questionnaires, assessment forms and waste audits to test and build awareness about school trash. The project team will also develop a list of biodegradable lunch alternatives to recommend to students, their parents and staff.

"Teaching children about the environment is an important part of education in school as well as in the community," says Kotecha. "The ECO Project is valuable as a practical application  in promoting and developing LTMHS as an environmentally conscious facility."

A crank cotter gauge, a torque wrench and a chain cleaner: Those are just a few of the tools that this grant will be buying the Philemon Wright Bike Repair and Maintenance Program.

The program is a joint project of the Environmental Club and the Work Oriented Training Path Program, or WOTP, at Philemon Wright High School in Gatineau, Que. "The WOTP students are involved in education through a work program, instead of the standard graduation program," explains Brant Churchill, a teacher at Philemon Wright.

"The students in the WOTP program will learn bike repair and maintenance as part of their curriculum," says Churchill. "The curriculum will also include lessons and projects on the benefits of biking for health and the community's environment." Meanwhile, the Environmental Club will use the tools the grant funds buy to learn to fix their own bikes and to repair scrap bikes for donation to low-income families.

The goal of the program is to facilitate learning about green forms of transportation, says Churchill, in theory and in practice. "We're trying to teach students how to bike sustainably not only for fun, but as a form of basic transportation," he says. And, he adds, "If you're able to maintain your own bike, you'll have fewer problems while biking and will be less likely to abandon this form of transportation when your bike has a few problems."

"Our school is located close to the downtown core, and we have almost no green space surrounding the building." That's how teacher Linda Handiak describes Vanguard Intercultural School in Westmount, Que., a neighbourhood of Montreal. "However," adds Handiak, "we do have a flat roof on which we could start a garden."

"The Sky is the Limit" is a project to create that garden, which will focus on edible plants. Helping the project will be advisors from city hall and the University of Quebec at Montreal, which sells planters suitable for rooftop gardens. The grant will fund the purchase of the planters, plus soil, seeds and organic fertilizer.

The garden is a natural fit with the school's approach to learning. "Our students have some learning disabilities," says Handiak, "but they are able to follow a regular curriculum using multisensory adaptation." Handiak says the Grade 9 science teacher is eager to involve her students in the garden, "and the Grade 8 math teacher, who uses recipes to teach concepts."

The project was conceived by seven students who steer the school's social justice committee, says Handiak, who also sits on the committee. If the garden prospers, they plan to bring produce to a local community kitchen. "The garden will serve not only to teach academic subjects," she says, "but also to sow good citizenship." The sky's the limit, indeed.

"Our school lunchroom produces a shocking amount of waste," says Marie-Michele Fradet, a teacher at Drummondville Elementary School, "so much that the janitor has to empty garbage cans before the hour is over."

Fradet and another teacher, together with their classes, are hoping to change all that with their Waste-Free Lunches project. "Many of our students bring packaged, processed foods to school. We will create an awareness of how much garbage is produced by using over-packaged products and we will reduce the garbage production in a concrete way."

To establish a baseline for improvement, the project team will measure the amount of garbage produced from student lunch boxes in the first two weeks of the school year. Then they'll educate the school community about the need to reduce that waste, using student-led presentations, posters, graphs, newsletters and podcasts. The grant will support the production of those communication vehicles, and allow the team to buy a six-piece spill-proof reusable plastic lunch container for every student, and a composting bin for every classroom.

The team will continue to measure the amount of waste produced throughout the school year and publish their results. The goal, says Fradet, is to encourage continued participation and improvement and to demonstrate that "small changes can have a significant impact on the environment."

The Network of Alternatives Centre is a high school in Pointe Claire, Quebec, for at-risk youth. "Many of our students have been through several different schools and we are specialized at helping them," says science teacher Diisa Niemi. "We can act as a positive influence on the community and the environment by growing heritage species of vegetable and edible plants."

The school will grow those plants in a greenhouse on the school property that the students will design and build. Money from the grant will buy the wood and glass for construction, and the soil and heritage seeds for planting. "The students will care for the greenhouse and the plants for the duration of the growing season," says Niemi. All the while, they'll be learning about soil, composting, water conservation and the importance of heritage seeds to biodiversity.

"When it comes time to harvest," says Niemi, we'll use the produce in our cooking classes." In the school's cooking program, students learn to plan, make and serve healthy meals.

Niemi hopes that the greenhouse project will help motivate some of the students to stay in school, and introduce them to new skills and career ideas, such as carpentry, construction and gardening. Working on a goal " in this case, building a greenhouse and growing a harvest " "helps students stay focused on their education," says Niemi, "and hopefully fosters the desire to make the planer a greener place."